DATE: Thursday, August 28, 1997             TAG: 9708270033

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B12  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Editorial 

                                            LENGTH:   73 lines

SCHOOL STANDARDS MAKE CAREFUL PROGRESS

State School Superintendent Richard LaPointe says Virginia needs to move more cautiously in adopting new school accreditation standards. His concerns demand a respectful tapping of the brakes on educational reform.

After all, who is in a better position to know if theory that sounds swell on paper might be a dud in the real world?

Past and present boards of education have won deserved accolades for toughening learning requirements for Virginia students. The current board is moving in the right direction by trying to ensure that both students and schools are held accountable for meeting the new standards.

But before adopting a final accreditation plan on Sept. 4, the board would do well to listen carefully to LaPointe. When he suggests that parts of the plan are arbitrary and that the timetable is too aggressive, he is not speaking as a philosophical renegade.

Instead, he is a loyal member of the education team assembled by Gov. George F. Allen. Presumably, if he is challenging parts of the plan that the board is poised to adopt, he is raising legitimate, practical concerns.

Most of the proposed changes submitted by LaPointe in a 56-page report are fine-tuning. But a few have broad implications. The superintendent suggests, for instance, that the board postpone adopting a pass-fail benchmark for school accreditation purposes until it sees how students fair on a new set of tests due to be administered next spring.

As currently written, the standards say that schools in which 30 percent or more of students fail will be denied accreditation once the plan is fully implemented.

While that cutoff sounds reasonable enough, it is entirely arbitrary. At the June meeting during which the figure was picked, the determining factor was a question: How much failure are you willing to tolerate?

In fact, the board has no idea how Virginia students will perform on the new tests. Suppose there is a 50 percent failure rate. Do we really want to strip 50 percent of state schools of their accreditation? Suppose there is a 90 percent pass rate. Would the 70 percent mark then be too low?

Suppose there is a clear racial pattern to the results. Has the state considered the legal implications if a two-tiered system of accredited and unaccredited schools follows racial lines?

In setting up standards for denying accreditation, LaPointe argues that education officials must ``ensure that the process is fair and there is minimal negative impact on large numbers of schools in the commonwealth.'' It is not backtracking on educational reform to say that he is right.

Another worry is that schools which miss the mark must have a ``corrective action plan'' within three months. LaPointe says that's not enough time for developing a thoughtful, workable plan.

After all, school systems are much like battleships. Turning them around takes time and a wide berth. You cannot reverse deep-seated educational failure merely by willing it.

The attraction of the proposed educational reforms is that they aim to inject a greater dose of accountability into public schools. The primary limitation is that no one - neither LaPointe nor the board - has clearly spelled out what happens to students and school systems that fail to meet expectations.

Board President Michelle Easton suggests that the threat of losing accreditation will shame administrators and teachers into performing better. But much classroom failure has more to do with family economics than with motivation.

The purpose of educational reform is neither glossy standards that win national acclaim nor get-tough actions that make appealing political sound bites. The purpose is a better-educated citizenry.

If the superintendent, who is in daily touch with school officials across the state, has concerns, then the board of education should heed his warnings. Speedy reform is desirable. But reform that stands the test of time should be the real goal. MEMO: Tomorrow: Schools and technology _ the mismatch between mandated

standards and available funding.

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